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Russian Ouija
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Published: September 23, 2009
In the late 1800s when Arthur Conan Doyle and a host of other leading lights were preoccupied with spiritualism, a parlor game was introduced to cash in on the trend. It was called "Ouija."
After over a hundred years it lives on -- helping players communicate with those who haven't. Parker Brothers even makes a Ouija board that glows in the dark for those not easily creeped-out.
Basically, a Ouija board (pronounced "weegee" in these parts) is a simple flat board with "yes," "no," the alphabet and the ten numerals printed on its smooth surface. Over that surface glides a small board or planchette under the direction of multiple players, each of whom has a finger or two in contact with it. The players ask the board some agreed upon question; a pointer on the planchette points to the letters and numbers one at a time, spelling out an answer.
The players act together under the direction of the Dear Departed; or the will of the group; or the most assertive player, pushing harder while plausibly denying he or she is doing so.
Those who are sensible to the Old Testament's injunction against messing around with the occult sometimes avoid Ouija on grounds that it may channel Old Nick rather that the Dear Departed when spelling out messages, as in the Puritans' maxim, "the Devil still finds work for idle hands."
It's a notion that bears examining on two levels. From a pious believer's perspective, the board might serve as a sort of prayer prosthesis, but pointing darkwards. From a secular perspective, it might serve as an instrument of clandestine bullying, used for forcing one's will and ideas on others while seeming to be a team player.
Last week I was listening to Public Radio while an analyst described the Russian response to the U.S. decision stop deployment of a missile system designed to parry the ballistic expression of an Iranian death wish.
A friend familiar with such matters tells me that shift in policy is plausible from a military technology perspective. But that's only half the story; the geopolitics of the move is another matter.
KGB graduate Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier, has called the new US position "brave." President Medvedev called it "reasonable."
Many in Poland and the Czech Republic called it "business as usual." Seventy years ago, a not-so-strange flirtation between Stalin and Hitler divied-up Poland. A year earlier, Czechoslovakia had been told by France and England to cut the best deal they could with Hitler; "Hey, we're outta here."
From the perspective of two nations who've so recently sniffed the first air of freedom after half a century under Soviet oppression, our missile waffle must smell a lot like Munich and Neville Chamberlain's "peace for our time" gaffe -- déjà vu all over again.
Czech and Polish leaders had cut a perilous deal with an internationally unpopular American administration to welcome those anti-missile facilities onto their soil over loud protests from Russia.
Now, having provoked their belligerent neighbor, the U.S. is perceived as easing away. We just baited the Bear. They're in the cage with it.
For now, Russia is making nice. But knowing what comes next is, as Winston Churchill said, "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."
Countries critical of American foreign policy over the long run view us as unpredictable. From their perspective, we can't shoot and chew policy at the same time.
Nothing in our national history prepared us for 9/11. But to a nation that's been totaled by Genghis Khan's Golden Hoard and Napoleon at his zenith, and survived the German sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad, 9/11 must seem like a minor fender-bender.
When, after the first few minutes behind the wheel of their shiny new liberty, Russia wound up in the ditch, pushover prey for mafia and the oligarchs, it wasn't democracy that rode to their rescue—it was the hard, heavy hand of concentrated power that had repelled Bonaparte and Hitler.
And that's one of the hands on Russia's Ouija planchette. It's not yet pushing as hard as it can. In a way, Russia survived the last decade by dining on its seed corn, so flush with natural resources that shortfalls in exporting intellectual property and manufacturing have had little effect.
But this kind of feast includes no dessert. Extracted resources, however plentiful, are eventually exhausted. If sustainable systems haven't grown up to replace them, what follows isn't pretty. The markets for Russia's energy cornucopia could dry up long before their oil and natural gas do, as climate stabilization pressures push developed countries toward domestic, renewable, non-carbon energy.
During World War II, Joseph Stalin's hand was all alone on Russia's Ouija planchette. Today, Putin's and Medvedev's weighty digits would to well to quide it toward spelling out a clear post-"extraction era" vision for Russia.
(Mooresville's Stan Thompson is a retired strategic planner and environmental futurist for BellSouth Telecommunications. His column appears every other week in the Tribune. Email him at: HST2nd@aol.com)
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